Trials and Tribulations of an Addicted Crafter

Hi, My name is Bob and I live in Augusta, GA. The wife and I celebrated our 54 years of marriage in March of this year, and have started our second 50 years. My wife is very supportive of my craft addiction. My main addiction is Copic Markers and card making. Looking forward to hearing your comments about my blog.

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ultraroyale

Augusta, GA, United States

I am retired from the US Army after 24 years of service. I am happily married, and celebrated our 50 years of marriage on March 10th. My wife is very supportive of my craft addiction.My main addiction is card making. She is quite crafty herself and does crocheting,plastic canvas and kniting. Have one furbaby "Sandy" a five year old cat. She rules the house

I have been playing with "Print then Cut" function of Cricut Design Space.The more I play with it, the more I like it. The big thing is that Provocraftseems to be hinting that more improvements are in the works. I sure hopeso.

So, yesterday I tried to really given the Print then Cut update a real workout. So far I have tried out various variations of printing then cutting imagescontained in the image gallery and cartridges that I have purchased. Whenthe image prints out it has a heavy border around the image. Verydisconcerting to start, but, the heavy border is to allow the Cricut ExploreTo cut close to the actual image.

The Halloween card shown below was made with the Print the Cut function.The only item that had me worried was the spider web. It looked like one bigblob of black, but as you can see it cut out alright.

The other items were also cut with the Print then Cut function. The two thatare colored were from cartridges I have. The image of the girl with therufﬂed dress is a digital image that I bought and downloaded. Think of thepossibilities. You could size the image to the correct size, then print the item from Design Space then color it with your favorite coloring medium, mine is Copic markers. Then when you aresatisﬁed with it, put it on the mat and cut the colored image out. Walla, youhave a perfectly colored image that is cut and ready to use on a card. And,no hand cutting. Yay!!!!

"Examples of "Print then Cut"

They have also improved the weld function and added a slice function, which is normally only found on the high end software.

Okay, so I guess that's about all for today. If you have any questions, leave it as a comment and I'll answer back.

Provocraft finally released the update for the "Cricut Explore Design Space" Print then Cut function.

I have one thing to say "WOW". I have been playing with in all morning and love it. Thank You Provocraft, finally a real advance in how we can use the machine. The Explore with the Design Space software update were well worth the purchase of the "Cricut Explore".

There are a few thing to do with the new "Print then Cut" function, but the most important is;

"Take your time with the Calibration"

I had to do the calibration three times before I was satisfied with it. The calibration is very important because this determines how the Explore cut out the image the it printed on your printer. If you do the calibration properly, the cut on the Explore will be just inside of the colored portion of the image that you printed.

If you want to see how the Print then Cut works, go to "YouTube" andfind the Videos posted by "Crafts by 2 Print then Cut".Start with the " Update Overview". They have about five (5) videos including one on calibrating the machine.

In my opinion the Cricut Explore combined with the Cricut Design Space is one of the best cutting machine that Provocraft has come out with, and I've had all of them. It cuts beautifully and has some of the same functions that some of my high end machines that cost me $700.00 and more. The "Print then Cut" feature is worth the price of the Cricut Explore.

Tuesday, September 9th

"Charming"

In my last post, I was extolling the benefits of the "Cricut Explore" for cutting shapes and mats for the shapes. There is another benefit, in that you can scan shapes that you have cut with you Spellbinder dies an bring them into the "Cricut Design Space" and covert them for use in the program.

To me, that is a real advantage and a money saver.

Now for the card of the day. I usually make between ten to twelve cards per week. I don't have a favorite stamp company, but right now it seems like I am mostly working with "Stampin Up". The stamp set that I used to create today's card is called "Charming". I believe it was in last years catalogue.

But, anyway here is today's card;

"Charming"

The stamp set as I stated is a set from last years " Stampin Up" catalogue called "Charming". It is still available as a digital download. The patterned paper from "Close to my Heart" was out of my stash and was just scraps. The crystals are from a store that was closing down.

The flower is a solid stamp that I colored with markers, then huffed on it and stamped. The card I would consider and "All Occasion Card", but it is a good mans card.